Hello Eveyone,
This is my first time on this blog site. I thought that I would use this site to post information that would be of help to myself.
I recently came across this article in a webstie which mentioned "How Reliance has changed India's petro retail sector" by Sudhir Bisht. It seemed to be rather interesting case study about how a company like reliance was able to break through itself in between a tight market dominated by PSU's.PSU's which were serving over the last couple of decades....I could not really judge the impact of Reliance's entry into the petro retail sector, but I could say that a company like Shell has created a place for itself in this business....A very late entrant into the Petro retail sector, Shell has been able to make a tremendous impact on the perception of a common man about a petrol bunk.With a very vibrant atmosphere and coulourful attire, a smile on the refiller's face, a spray of water on your windsheild something that you could never think of 4 or 5 years back..I am not saying that it was impossible but the fact remained that the older bunks looked like a ration shop where the need to buy kerosene was more than the need to sell it and the seller had a huge grin on his face...Some of the ways that Sudhir pointed out in his article were really impressive...here are some of the highlighted points..
Employing the Best in business and emphasis on Training
Meticulous Planning
Dominating markets by new approach
Cutting edge technology
Company owned company operated stations (COCOs)
Its very interesting to see that if you flip the first few pages of any 1st year management book you could find that the 5 mentioned points are more or less the 1st five chapters of the book..
Knowing exactly what the customer needs and implemeting the same.Managing Demand supply, using beter technology to improve productivity and above all provide customer service.
I sometimes cannot digest the fact that how could the older PSU's forget the basics and still survive in the market.I assume that it was a seller's market and that we did not have any options to work with.I just hope that more and more pvt investment be introduced in this sector and like in the US we could see a couple of different outlets with a couple of different colors.Hope that the goverment provides these pvt companies the same subsidies as it provides to all PSU's and that the weights are equal on both ends.
Thanks
